Monday, April 20, 2015

Archbishop Cordileone and "cafeteria Catholics"

I'm not a Catholic---or even a Christian, for that matter---but it seems like Archbishop Cordileone is right and city Catholics who put the full-page ad in the Chronicle the other day asking the Pope to remove him are merely "cafeteria Catholics."

“People are free to complain to the Vatican about bishops, but there is no formal process for removing them,” said Patricia Miller, an author who writes nationally on Catholic issues. “You can lobby it, and if you have the Vatican’s ear because you are a big donor or someone with big influence, you might get heard some. But the Vatican is not a democracy. It is literally a feudal court, a monarchy.“There is no expectation of transparency there,” Miller said. “Pope Francis is trying to open it up ever so slightly — he’s created a layperson committee now looking into sex abuse in the church — but in the end, he makes all the decisions.” So does that mean he has heard the cries from San Francisco and is ready to act? “The short answer is no,” said Miller (emphasis added).

Even unbelievers like me have always known that the Catholic church opposes birth control, adultery, and gay sex---even all sex outside of marriage.

The church's moral teachings have always been tough for Catholics, like on masturbation: All the boys pictured above with Cordileone presumably indulge in a "gravely evil" practice?

Surely being a Catholic---or even a Christian---involves in the first place believing, like Alice, "six impossible things before breakfast."

Catholics who oppose Cordileone are like the Muslims who claim that jihadists have hijacked the true Islam, when in fact the terrorists can easily cite the Koran and Islamic tradition to support their murderous behavior, like Archbishop Cordileone can cite scripture and church tradition to support his views.